


The Return Home

by seularen



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-29
Updated: 2012-07-29
Packaged: 2017-11-10 23:13:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/471789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seularen/pseuds/seularen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Always is a long time to keep the window open, after all, and he'd never expect forgiveness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Return Home

"Won't you play me to sleep," he asked, "on the nursery piano?" and as she was crossing to the day-nursery he added thoughtlessly, "And shut that window. I feel a draught."

"O George, never ask me to do that. The window must always be left open for them, always, always."

\--Peter Pan, Chapter 16, The Return Home

 

Jane sets out mason jars with kitchen herbs on a sunny ledge. Steve uses the basil in his marinara. Crushed mint goes in Bruce’s tea and Tony’s bourbon. When Jane asks him to tend the plants while she’s gone, he agrees. Bruce’s studies never took him close to botany, but he enjoys watching their progress. After a few days, he’s given them names. He smiles quietly whenever his eyes wander over to the window.

Bruce forgets to pass on the responsibility before he disappears for a few months, and the plants die. No one tells him this, but when he comes back in April he can tell from one look. He feels awful for a lot of reasons, but this one is a bruising kick. Jane isn’t there-- Alaska again, Thor informs him-- so he can’t even apologize.

‘Always letting _someone_ down, aren’t you?’ he thinks as he unpacks his shirts. ‘You should’ve stayed away this time, Banner.’ 

\--

Their rooms take on the personalities of their residents in settled, innocuous ways. Routines are established, habits observed, and secrets swapped in the off-duty hours they share. Together they build this home, tentative, as if they’ve never before stood on firm foundations. But the excuse of fear wears thinner with each all-nighter and battle. 

“We’ve shared too much to be anything less than a family,” Clint observes one night when it’s just him and Bruce on the roof garden. 

“You think?” He’s sitting underneath the tree clint’s climbed.

“I’ve seen it before.” They both look out at the city horizon, hazy with light pollution. ‘The circus,’ Bruce thinks, remembering what Clint told him at Coulson’s funeral. He wants Clint to be wrong, but can’t find any evidence to deny it.

"Who's the mother?" He chooses to ask instead of letting the conversation slip into anything more serious. 

"Steve," Clint responds immediately even as Bruce thinks the same, and they laugh. The moment is self-contained, bound with the stillness of the night.

'Oh,' Bruce realizes, 'I'm so fucked.'

\--

He wakes up as a long strip of aching, traumatized muscle and bone. For the first few minutes he lays on his back and sinks into truly pathetic self-pity, allowing himself to acknowledge every unfair, wretched thought he usually suppresses. 

Then he closes his eyes again and inventories what he can recall about the battle. Memories and reactions-- anything in order to learn more about the other guy. It isn’t reliving, not precisely. They don't even feel like his memories; more like dreams, or imaginings. 

Eventually, he makes himself move. Getting out of bed is the hardest struggle, and he encourages himself on with the thought that it doesn't get worse than this. 

‘Come on, make it to standing,’ he chants, grunting with strain, ‘You can do it, feet on the ground, Banner.’

When he does finally straighten, Bruce doesn’t give himself time to wonder at how small the victory really is. He begins moving through yoga positions, stretching out some of the pain. When he feels limber enough to walk without tensing up, he allows himself a concession and smokes from the bowl Tony made him. He’s able to breathe, then, the expansion of his lungs feeling like a sunrise. He stretches more languidly, taking his time, reacquainting himself with his body and reminding himself that he, too, lives here. Not just a monster. 

\--

Sometimes, all he wants is the uncomplicated, comforting presence of another person near him. Uncomplicated, to Bruce, means lack of fear; it isn't too much to ask, he thinks (except it is, and he knows it). There's only one person in the building who has absolutely nothing to fear from the Hulk, and sometimes Bruce just wants to feel small and safe. So his feet will take him to Thor, wherever he might be. 

Thor has a little brother and, for all that little brother is a murderous psychopath these days, he's still quick to recognize the stricken face of a person who can't quite manage to ask for what he needs. So thor will put down the weights and smile at Bruce and wrap his huge arms around the other man, squeezing the air from him. Bruce will bury his head into Thor's chest and enjoy the way his breath struggles against the pressure. They'll stand in the silent gym, embracing, and Thor won't move until Bruce shifts his weight. Even then, he'll still keep his hands on Bruce's shoulders and he'll say, "Come, Bruce, let's walk the grounds," or "Have I told you of the time...?" and he'll keep his arm around Bruce as they walk upstairs, and they will both pretend like Bruce doesn't curl in close.

\--

When he was a kid, his mom read stories to him before bed: The Chronicles of Narnia, Frog and Toad, Peter Pan. He liked Peter a lot until the very last chapter when he pulled the trick on Mrs. Darling. Bruce imagined how upset she must have been when Peter barred the window. 

“That’s mean,” he said, upset, “Why would he do that?”

“He’s sad and lonely, honey,” mom replied, wiping his bangs to the side, “And he knows he’s going to miss his friends when they’re gone.”

\--

"C'mon, Banner, don't be shy," Tony says. Bruce looks at the glass, one of a hundred offered his way over the past months, then shrugs and accepts. 

“Wait, seriously?” Tony just has to check. 

“Sure, why not?” Bruce’s quiet smirk is gone almost before Tony can catch it. “What’s the worst that could happen?” Tony’s grin is slow, and genuine, and goddamn it feels good. 

“That’s more like it.” Tony moves around the bar to join Bruce. They walk to the window and look down on the street and the cars that look like toys. Later, Bruce won’t remember the conversation, or the taste of the drink, but he’ll remember Tony’s hand on his shoulder and the way he looked when he laughed.

\--

Bruce thinks about how he might live forever (or a close approximate). He thinks about waking up to find out he’s killed one of them. When he sits with them, surrounded by messy noise and laughing banter, he glances at the faces and imagines how they might look at a funeral. 

He thinks about these things and packs his bag and never says goodbye.

But he’s weak, and he’s selfish, because he always comes back. He lets Fury convince him of the greater good. He doesn’t cover his tracks as well as he could. More and more often, it doesn’t even take Natasha tracking him down or Tony sending a postcard to Bruce’s supposed safe house. Sometimes, he simply finds himself on the doorstep, hand hovering, wondering if this time he’s been gone too long.

Always is a long time to keep the window open, after all, and he'd never expect forgiveness.

\--

“Welcome home,” Steve says, smiling brightly and offering him a bowl of spaghetti. 

Every time.


End file.
